I'm a little late with this - been a busy week - but I've got a beef with the conventional wisdom that formed around the third and final presidential debate, focused on foreign policy.

First, a point of agreement. The mainstream interpretation of Mitt Romney's staid performance goes like this: he was attempting to project moderation, appeal to suburban women with his calls for peace, and present as a reasonable commander-in-chief.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post has an interesting post today voicing some surprise at all the hullabaloo, in the run-up to the Supreme Court's big decision on healthcare reform, about the politicized court.

As an institution, the court is insulated from party politics, but the
men and women who serve on it are increasingly selected through an
intensely political process meant to insure that they don’t disappoint
the party that promoted them.

Yes and no, I think. In the short term, it amps up the pressure on Senator Jack Reed, the one member of the state's Congressional delegation who has not yet come out in favor of same-sex marriage, to do so. Marriage Equality Rhode Island (MERI) is already taking it to him:

"Today, President Obama reaffirmed the American ideal that all citizens
should be treated equally.

Of all the pontificating about what the Supreme Court will do on Obamacare - Kennedy and Scalia as swing votes, Chief Justice Roberts seeking the broadest majority possible - one of the more interesting takes comes in the form of a survey of high court insiders.

The right-leaning American Action Forum and the left-leaning Blue Dog Research Forum conducted a poll of former Supreme Court clerks and lawyers who have argued before the court.

Picture this scenario. The Senate holds a high-profile vote on a
proposal focused directly on implementing the Buffett Rule, one that
would bring the current tax rate for millionaires paying lower rates on
investments up to 30 percent. This, at at exactly the moment when the
GOP is picking a nominee who is worth $250 million and is personally
benefitting to an enormous degree from the current rate — one that’s
lower than many middle class taxpayers pay.

The Gridiron Club, that stuffy old Washington press club of which the Providence Journal is a founding member, had its annual roast of politicians and media types recently. Pretty good gag from President Obama, who spoke at the end:

By tradition, the president of the United States gets the last word at any Gridiron dinner.

Education Commisioner Deborah Gist has ushered in a brand of education reform - centered on charter schools and rigorous teacher evaluation - that comports with an intriguing development on the national front: President Obama's neoliberal embrace of the standards movement that came into full flower under President Bush.

The late Senator Ted Kennedy spent decades fighting for health reform. And yesterday, at the signing ceremony for the health overhaul bill, Representative Patrick Kennedy gave President Obama a copy of the health reform bill that his late father filed in 1970. That was widely reported. But what did the Congressman scrawl on that memento? Politico has the details:

A piece splashed across cnn.com's home page focuses on Central Falls Superintendent Frances Gallo and opens with her finding a Barack Obama doll hanging in effigy in the high school - a slap at the president for voicing public support for Gallo's high-profile move to fire the school's entire staff. From the story:

A year into the age of Obama, has the president lived up to his potential? No, says an editorial in our sister paper, the Boston Phoenix:

In response to a question from Oprah Winfrey about how he would grade his time in office, President Barack Obama gave himself a "solid B-plus." Grade inflation? An example of Obama's notoriously high self-regard? No doubt a bit of both.

US Senator Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama during the Democratic primary last year was, of course, an important bit of symbolism for the candidate - Camelot passes the torch to a new generation.

But it was also noteworthy in that it signaled a split between the nation's two most storied Democratic families - the Kennedys and the Clintons.